Side note: it might not be wise to trust me too much; what if I'd actually sent coins to Pirate?

Luckily, the methods used were fairly scientific, and anyone can replicate them.

I recommend asking me for a signature from my GPG key before doing a trade. I will NEVER deny such a request.

Transactions must be included in a block to be properly completed. When you send a transaction, it is broadcast to miners. Miners can then optionally include it in their next blocks. Miners will be more inclined to include your transaction if it has a transaction fee.

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Shoud I be suprised that the wold's largest bitcoin address is linked to silk road?

I'm not. I remember somebody already having said that he traced his Silk Road deposit directly to the large address. This just confirms it for me.

I've been looking at the huge list of transactions to and from the Silk Road wallet, trying to see how they can be making so much, comparing the amount they're able to stash in the large address with the throughput of the wallet, and found:

i.e. nothing very consistent. I was hoping to see that a fixed percentage of the throughput was being stashed away, which would make sense if it was commission they were charging. Probably they're just moving excess coins to cold storage on an ad hoc basis to keep them safe. It doesn't necessarily represent "profits", just coins they're holding which aren't likely to be needed soon. The majority of it could well belong to their customers, just sitting around in customer accounts waiting to be spent or withdrawn.

Does anyone remember when the big Silk Road scam happened? One of their big traders had a "sale" and ended up running off with everyone's money, but when?

Side note: it might not be wise to trust me too much; what if I'd actually sent coins to Pirate?

Luckily, the methods used were fairly scientific, and anyone can replicate them.

But if you had sent them to pirate, the address would be in the "pirate cluster" of addresses. There are 'only' 1138 addresses in his cluster at the moment. He once posted that 1PSf86KnLuzM7Ris5kDhTEZwooR3p2iyfV is in the gpumax wallet. From that znort's code finds 1138 addresses from his live wallet, from which the weekly interest payments are made.

the reason is, because when i ask for a withdrawal, it comes in exactly the same transaction as the interest payment.

so if someone is due to be paid 100 in interest, but they request a 400 btc withdrawal at the same time, everyone seems to assume they have (500 / 0.07) invested when in reality their balance is much lower.

I was just hinted at this post. This is not at all what is seen on the block chain and what users say.

The 800 payment last Wednesday can be timed with withdrawal requests shown on the forum. I also was told by BS&T users that they could withdraw at any time, and Bitcoinmax offers withdrawals within 24h, explicitly allowing "withdrawals at any time"! How could the withdrawals be delayed until the next Monday with such promises?

Furthermore, look at the immediate large re-investment on Monday last week. Withdrawal?

So whatever he's doing the mixing system is complex, but it's interesting that GPUMax blocks are easily traced into BTCST payouts.What this needs is someone infinitely more knowledgeable than myself to see how interconnected these addresses really are...

This means that the coins currently held at 1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM are6% tainted by coins that came from coins known to have been owned by pirate at some point.

Another remark: if anyone can find addresses that are known to be owned by pirateand aren't part of the closure computed in my previous post, please post them (orsend them to me), it would help make the calculation more accurate.

that low amount of taint would suggest to me that it could just be that either pirate or some of his payees shop at said S R destination. Would that also be your take on it?

If you're not excited by the idea of being an early adopter 'now', then you should come back in three or four years and either tell us "Told you it'd never work!" or join what should, by then, be a much more stable and easier-to-use system. - GAIt is being worked on by smart people. -DamienBlack

I meant the other way... how much is the pirate closure tainting say the receiving addresses of the last 10 transactions (or 10 random transactions since we are getting close to his weekly payout time)?

that low amount of taint would suggest to me that it could just be that either pirate or some of his payees shop at said S R destination. Would that also be your take on it?

I never said I proved the address belonged to pirate.

All I've shown is:

- how some coins going into that address have a very strong pirate flavor (>28%) - how the coins currently stored on that address have a non-negligible pirate flavor (around 6 %)

In other words, it's highly likely that pirate has a close businessrelationship with the owner of the fat address.

That includes the possibility that he himself is the owner.

I simply mis-spoke on that but am still curious.Let me ask the same question and replace pirate with 'that address'. Still curious to hear your take on the assumption to s r activity..

If you're not excited by the idea of being an early adopter 'now', then you should come back in three or four years and either tell us "Told you it'd never work!" or join what should, by then, be a much more stable and easier-to-use system. - GAIt is being worked on by smart people. -DamienBlack

In order to draw conclusions, one needs to have standard values on taint contamination from ALL bitcoin addresses created past Jan '12 (the date this FAT address was first funded). If we know how much taint an average address in the blockchain contains, we can gauge the probability with which any other address is related to pirate.

More simply put: If every address in the blockchain contains roughly 5% of "pirate taint", than this 6% of taint you found is nothing special. Its like 2/3 of all dollar bills having cocain on them. It doesnt say, that you are a drug dealer if 2/3 all the bills in your personal purse have traces of cocain on them. If on the other hand if 99% of all the bills have cocain on them, you may be likely close to some cocain operation.

I meant the other way... how much is the pirate closure tainting say the receiving addresses of the last 10 transactions (or 10 random transactions since we are getting close to his weekly payout time)?

Feel free to use the block parser to gather you own stats and reach your own conclusions

I see, so you publish research without providing a baseline. Good scienceing.

28% taint on one transaction could just be somebody cashing out from pirate and spending 28% of it on drugs, could it not? The 6% total taint is slightly more interesting, but again, we have no baseline for comparison.

You already have everything setup, it would take me an hour to get started. If the problem is picking the addresses, here's 10 I pulled pseudorandomly from various recentish transactions:17qq5A3XKfrxpJRSC5LH6APjvTDb9hTmma19NmcoeHo2qwEFjQdUrbGuk34SU2fgfDeg14hYbtGjTButtsYhCwsJpGBD9TMdMY6DKt1MW2LCfz7bvFZJG88QTeC3a1cUHLSbS2ty16VsQigp45paX9cwt8Ees6hAPbMpNSUjj1dice8EMZmqKvrGE4Qc9bUFf9PX3xaYDp1QGyQGd9WprNZ4ud75jUVE4gcjEWxwUv1L12oiay6fiaFhHU2sPeCad18Myr5nHJzgGa1KJTGpNzYsFibLmq9WaTGAXQbhRFUgnG3z1VayNert3x1KzbpzMGt2qdqrAThiRovi8

Several of pirate's lenders receive weekly interest deposited directly into their MtGox accounts and pirate is also thought to have recently been involved in moving large volumes of coins on MtGox. This would likely lead to any coins moved through MtGox recently having a strong scent of pirate on them. This could explain why the Silk Road coins are so piratey smelling, even if pirate's lenders aren't Silk Road customers.

In order to draw conclusions, one needs to have standard values on taint contamination from ALL bitcoin addresses created past Jan '12 (the date this FAT address was first funded). If we know how much taint an average address in the blockchain contains, we can gauge the probability with which any other address is related to pirate.

More simply put: If every address in the blockchain contains roughly 5% of "pirate taint", than this 6% of taint you found is nothing special. Its like 2/3 of all dollar bills having cocain on them. It doesnt say, that you are a drug dealer if 2/3 all the bills in your personal purse have traces of cocain on them. If on the other hand if 99% of all the bills have cocain on them, you may be likely close to some cocain operation.

28% taint on one transaction could just be somebody cashing out from pirate and spending 28% of it on drugs, could it not? The 6% total taint is slightly more interesting, but again, we have no baseline for comparison.

The 28% means that when Silk Road decided they had too much in their hot wallet and should move a few thousand offline, 28% of the coins they moved offline were from pirate's wallet. Kind of. It certainly doesn't mean that a pirate lender spent 28% of his interest payment on drugs. If the coins all came from a single pirate lender then the 28% means that the drug payment was made up 28% of coins from pirate and 72% of other unrelated coins. Kind of, again.